Freelance Projects, Design and Programming Tutorials
We wanted to have built, a traffic exchange, similar to enhance views.net. Where a user will come and sign up, be able to enter you tube videos into there account and have them display in a surf window… (Budget: $750-$1500 USD, Jobs: MySQL, PHP, Website Design, YouTube)
I’m looking for one or two people to take some articles that I have written already and to rewrite them. Payment will depend on how many you can do per hour and the quality of the rewrites. The rewrites need to convey the same message but in different words… (Budget: $30-$250 USD, Jobs: Article Rewriting)
You’re bidding to edit a flash file made in After Effects CS4 in HD (1920×1080) You will change the text in the fiile. Animation will stay the same. Its one of those intro type files. This Project… (Budget: $30-$250 USD, Jobs: After Effects, Flash)
We need to get to the top 1-5 in natural google with the following keywords: “star trek online” — high traffic, competitive (currently Page 3 or 4) “star trek online credits” — low traffic, moderate… (Budget: $250-$750 USD, Jobs: Internet Marketing, Link Building, SEO)
One guys created a blogspot account about our small business, we tried to contact Google to delete or remove the account with no luck. this guy created his blogspot account with a gmail account (only created for this purpose… (Budget: $30-$250 USD, Jobs: PHP)
I am looking for a front page redesign of my real estate website I want to keep the simplicity, and the color scheme. I want to bring the site more alive, and make it more sleeker. Only bid if you can present an idea to me before I award the project to you… (Budget: $30-$250 USD, Jobs: Graphic Design, User Interface / IA, Website Design)
A Coca-Cola advert that labels its Vitamin Water “nutritious” is misleading, the advertising watchdog has ruled.
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The UN Security Council welcomes the mostly peaceful and orderly referendum in Southern Sudan that is widely expected to result in secession.
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MPs are to vote on a Labour call for a rethink on the government’s decision to scrap the EMA support allowance for low-income students.
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More babies risk being born into poverty because of tax and benefit changes, a charity says.
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Academy exhibition examines British 20th Century sculpture
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William and Kate will want to strike a balance between ceremony and modesty Two family weddings, two significant birthdays – the Queen’s 85th in April, Prince Philip’s 90th in June – plus the usual round of royal duties and the preparations for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee next year.
The year 2011 promises to be a busy one for the Royal Family. But there is no doubt which event will be the high-point, both for the family and for the public.
Prince William’s wedding to Catherine Middleton at Westminster Abbey on 29 April has been long in coming. The couple have known each other for eight years since they met at St Andrews University.
The announcement of their engagement on 16 November last year caught the media by surprise.
But there can be little doubt that within the Royal Family it was common knowledge from an early part of 2010 that the engagement was to be announced in the autumn, with the wedding firmly pencilled in for the spring of 2011.
It certainly was not as spontaneous and unexpected as Miss Middleton tried to make it sound in her engagement interview. Within William’s family the planned engagement had been known about for a number of months.
Looking forward now to the wedding itself there is the prospect of the biggest royal celebration for a number of years.
“Though, inevitably, the wedding will be broadcast to audiences around the world I suspect William, in particular, and Kate will insist that it remains their day without unnecessary grandeur”
There will be weeks of speculation about the bride’s dress and other aspects of the day itself, countless merchandising opportunities for souvenir makers, significant business opportunities for London’s tourism industry, and a bumper weekend for retailers across the country as people use the wedding and the extra bank holiday as a reason to celebrate with parties of their own.
However, the officials at Buckingham Palace and St James’s Palace who are charged with organising the wedding are conscious of the economic circumstances of the country.
According to them, William and Kate’s wedding will, in many ways, be more of an echo of the wedding of his grandparents than that of his father and mother.
In the post-war Britain of 1947, the marriage of the then Princess Elizabeth to the Duke of Edinburgh was indeed a moment for national celebration but, grand though the occasion was, it was organised within the generally austere atmosphere of a country which was struggling to recover from the devastating economic impact of World War II.
By contrast, the marriage of the Prince of Wales to the then Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 was a lavish affair, deliberately staged at St Paul’s Cathedral so that as many people as possible could both line the route across central London and attend the ceremony itself.
In choosing Westminster Abbey rather than St Paul’s for their wedding, William and Kate are deliberately opting for something on a rather smaller and more intimate scale.
The choice of Westminster Abbey will mean a more intimate event The route between palace and abbey will be shorter, the congregation smaller and, of course, as the palace has been at pains to point out, the cost of the wedding – security and traffic management and so on apart -will be borne by the families of the bride and groom.
“It will be done properly and well, but not in an ostentatious and lavish manner,” one courtier has been quoted as saying. And that, I suspect, is the kind of wedding that William and Kate themselves want.
We have already seen a few clues as to how they plan to strike the balance. We know that Kate will travel to the Abbey by car rather than coach.
After the service, as man and wife, they will ride back to Buckingham Palace in a horse-drawn carriage with an escort from the Household Cavalry in full ceremonial dress. But once they get to the palace there will be a buffet-style reception rather than a full-scale wedding banquet.
There will, of course, be an appearance by the couple on the palace balcony for what will doubtless be the abiding image of the day as they embrace.
But the couple are not heading off immediately on honeymoon. They will remain at the palace for a “dinner and dance” hosted by William’s father for the couple’s immediate family and friends.
So William and Kate and their advisers are treading carefully in their wedding preparations. They are aware of the appetite of many millions of people, both here in Britain and abroad, to witness a ceremonial wedding on an appropriately grand scale and to share in the romantic “glow” of witnessing this young couple pledge themselves to each other.
But though, inevitably, the wedding will be broadcast to audiences around the world I suspect William, in particular, and Kate will insist that it remains their day without unnecessary grandeur.
Above all they want it to be an intimate ceremony after which they can return, as much as possible, to a life without too many unrealistic expectations that the wedding will be the curtain-raiser to a life on the public stage as the British royal family’s new golden couple.
That is precisely what they will be, of course, and they recognise that, but William has at least two more years to serve as an RAF search and rescue pilot.
And as for his wife – very probably she will wish to concentrate on their domestic life together. And who knows, perhaps she will present the Queen with another great grandchild to mark the Diamond Jubilee in 2012.
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Freezing weather affected high street sales during the first half of December The December freeze had an impact on sales during the Christmas period, according to new figures.
The Scottish Retail Consortium (SRC) said there was a significant fall, of 1.8%, in sales of non-food items.
However, food sales increased by 3.5% as people stocked up for the festive season in the snowy weather.
Like-for-like sales, which do not include new stores, rose by 0.7% in December compared with 2009, while total sales were up by 3.4%.
Total sales in the UK as a whole saw a drop of 0.3% for the same period.
But Scottish growth was against a weaker December 2009, while the UK’s decline was from a strong previous year.
The freezing weather affected high street sales during the first half of December but boosted one-stop shopping and neighbourhood stores.
It did, however, benefit online sales early in the month but slowed again near Christmas as retailers experienced delivery difficulties.
SRC director Fiona Moriarty said there was a big rush in the last week before Christmas.
But she added: “It wasn’t enough to outweigh the damage to non-food sales from the combination of bad weather and fears about job cuts and falling incomes.”
David McCorquodale, head of retail in Scotland for accountants KPMG, said 2011 was set to be a challenging year but Christmas figures from retailers did not reflect the “dire picture” of two years ago.
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The forum has warned public sector spending cuts could mean less money to fund treatment for users. The current economic climate could lead to an increase in drug-taking in Scotland, a report has warned.
The Scottish Drugs Forum said fewer job opportunities and reduced welfare benefits could help create the conditions for more vulnerable people to turn to drugs.
Its annual report also warned public sector spending cuts could mean less money to fund treatment for users.
The Scottish government said drugs services funding was at record levels.
The Scottish Drugs Forum (SDF) is a voluntary sector drugs policy and information agency.
Its director, David Liddell, said Scotland must learn lessons from the 1980s, when massive youth unemployment created the drugs problem of today.
He also expressed concern about the effect of cuts to local authority funding, arguing it could hit the Scottish government’s strategy of promoting recovery from addiction.
Mr Liddell said about 55,000 people in Scotland were classed as problem drug users.
He said poverty and deprivation were strongly related to drug addiction.
“The recession means there are fewer job opportunities all round so many people – particularly young people in deprived communities – may not get their chance to work themselves out of poverty and may turn to drugs to alleviate their boredom and despair,” Mr Liddell said.
“This is especially so if education and training budgets are cut by hard-pressed public sector agencies and welfare benefits are squeezed to an absolute minimum.”
Mr Liddell added: “There is also the danger that people who have been getting on top of their drug problems may be tempted to revert to using because the vital support services for helping families in crisis, who have housing difficulties or who need pre-employability skills are cut because of a contraction of budgets.
“The current and future situation not only threaten the prospects of recovery for people struggling to overcome problematic drug use – they also present the real and very depressing possibility of attracting more recruits into harmful drug use.”
The Scottish government said record funding for drugs services would be maintained if the Scottish parliament approved its budget.
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Mr Obama needs Mr Hu’s co-operation on climate change, North Korea, and Iran Chinese President Hu Jintao is to begin a four-day visit to the US, which will include the first state dinner there for a Chinese leader in 13 years.
Both countries hope to unveil a raft of commercial and trade deals when Mr Hu meets President Barack Obama.
After the state dinner at the White House on Wednesday, Mr Hu will go from Washington to Chicago for two days.
On Monday, some US senators pressed for Congress to penalise Beijing for “manipulating” its currency.
They said it was important to punish China if it did not allow the yuan to rise in value rather than manage its exchange rate, making Chinese products cheaper in the US and raising the price of US goods in China.
“There’s no bigger step we can take to preserve the American dream and promote job creation, particularly in the manufacturing sector… than to confront China’s manipulation of its currency,” Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said.
Mr Hu had earlier said the yuan was not undervalued, and that China had adopted a “managed floating exchange rate regime” determined by the balance of international payments and supply and demand.
He also questioned the role of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency and criticised US monetary policy, saying that by keeping interest rates low, the Federal Reserve was devaluing the dollar and creating inflation elsewhere.
Members of Congress are also focusing on China’s human rights record. Human rights activists, pro-Tibet campaigners, Uighurs, Taiwanese and others are also planning to hold protests during Mr Hu’s visit.
US and Chinese officials met on Monday at the White House to discuss commercial and trade issues, including energy deals. President Hu is due to join them, along with officials from the commerce ministry, on Tuesday.
The US is also encouraging China to buy tens of billions of dollars of aircraft from Boeing, car parts, agricultural goods and beef.
A Chinese trade mission has already signed six deals with US companies in Houston worth $600m (£376m), according to Chinese state media reports.
Trade between the US and China is worth $400bn, up from $100m 30 years ago, when the US formalised relations with the communist state.
The Obama administration also needs Beijing’s co-operation on climate change, North Korea, and Iran’s controversial nuclear programme.
The White House is to throw a lavish black-tie reception for President Hu on Wednesday evening, before which he will be greeted on arrival by Mr Obama and the First Lady, review troops, and attend talks.
Mr Hu is said to have felt insulted when former President George W Bush opted for lunch rather than a state dinner during his last visit in 2006.
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